


How Sarah Rogers Fixed Everything, Despite Being Dead For Over Eighty Years

by Dorkangel



Series: Steve's Mother is a BAMF [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Remembers, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Fluff and Humor, Headcanon, M/M, Post-Canon, Sarah Rogers kicks ass, Steve Feels, Steve is a little shit, Tony Being Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 05:04:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2953391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkangel/pseuds/Dorkangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sarah Rogers was a little different to how most people imagine her, and, similarly, most people tend to forget that Steve Rogers always was a little shit. Among that list is Tony Stark, who finds himself roughly disillusioned by Steve and Bucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Sarah Rogers Fixed Everything, Despite Being Dead For Over Eighty Years

 

Steve was at a press conference when he was handed a picture, apparently painted by a very gifted young artist at a local elementary school. This wasn't by any means an unusual occasion, since he was Captain America, and even Tony occasionally got given letters and pictures from little kids, and so maybe, thought Tony, who was next to him, he could have behaved a little more professionally.  
Steve frowned for a second at it, and then snorted and began coughing, a hand on his nose to cover his mouth, in the exact way that a person does to cover up the fact that they're laughing. Tony frowned at him disapprovingly - which was, honestly, a new experience, was this what Pepper felt like all the time? - and Steve plastered a genuinely smile onto his face, holding up the picture so that everyone else could see it.  
"Tell Captain Rogers what the picture's for." prompted a maternal-looking woman, who was presumably their teacher, and a shy little girl stepped forwards.  
"Um, we were doing a project called 'George Washington's Mother', 'cos, you know, if not for George Washington's mother there's be no George Washington? And we had to choose a historical figure's mom to draw and I did yours!"  
Grinning bravely, she stepped back into the group of kids, and Tony leaned forward to look at the picture. It showed a tall, blonde woman in a pristine nurse's uniform, smiling gently, her arms spread out to welcome everyone. Exactly what you'd expect Captain America's mother to look like.  
Steve glanced at it one more time, amusement dancing around the edge of his expression, before offering The Patriotic Smile to his audience.  
"Thank you very much!"

"Hey," asked Tony later, when they were back at Stark Tower. "Why'd you laugh at that picture, Steve? The kids might not have noticed anything, but that teacher did."  
"Hm? Oh." Steve glanced up from the newspaper he was reading and totally failed to suppress a smirk. "I didn't mean to. Just, my Ma didn't look like that."  
Tony glanced at the picture, which was propped up against a coffee table a couple of feet away. "Jeez, Steve, is that all?"  
"She wasn't anything like that." explained Steve quickly. "She was an Irish immigrant, which people weren't too fond of in the thirties, but if anyone tried to say anything to her she'd smack 'em. She was about five foot nothing, ginger, and very angry and very suffragist."  
"Huh?"  
"Um, 'feminist'?" Steve flushed as he said it, embarrassed as always by getting his words mixed up between modern and what he grew up with, but Tony was waving at him to shut up, getting excited.  
"No, hold on. When was your mom born?"  
"1890, I think. Why?"  
"So... she was, what, thirty? When women got the vote?"  
"Yeah. I was two, she went on a huge march with me holding her hand." Tony was staring at him, delighted and slack-jawed, and so Steve coughed half-awkwardly and continued. "Anyway, she _was_ a nurse, but I think it was mainly because diseases were afraid of her. She chain-smoked until they realised I had really had asthma, and then she quit and went cold turkey, all in a week, and just suffered through it without saying a word. She said, 'I'd rather you were able to breathe and I had a headache than the other way round, although that headache better shut the hell up, because-"  
"Because I need a goddam cigarette!" finished Bucky's unmistakable tones, and the pair of them, Steve with his arms folded, face right back in the early twenty first century, Tony listening in rapt fascination to Steve's description of his mother, looked up to see him leaning on the door, listening in.  
"You talking about your Ma? 'Cos she was kinda scary, Stevie, not gonna lie."  
Steve snorted. "She only scared you because you were a total punk and she didn't approve of you picking fights."  
"She approved of you getting involved in other people's, though," replied Bucky dryly. "Naturally."  
Steve shrugged, and gestured towards the picture. "A fifth grader drew that; it's meant to be her."  
Bucky didn't even have the grace to pretend not to laugh, he saw it and burst into guffaws, stumbling backwards.  
"Ahahahaha! Jesus Christ, someone disillusion that kid! I got the flu when I was ten, and she slapped me and told me to get over it."  
"Worked though," quipped Steve back, cheerfully. "Because you did and so did everyone else that got it."  
Bucky, who was still grinning, walked over and threw himself down on the couch next to Steve.  
"Hey," he laughed, more gently this time. "Remember when we were fifteen, and we were in that little cupboard of an apartment you lived in with her- the first time we ever kissed?"  
Steve beamed at him. "'Course I do, Buck."  
Tony froze for a moment, blinking, and then his jaw dropped open.  
"Yeah, and two seconds into this kiss your Ma walks in," continued Bucky cheerfully, ignoring Tony and his stunned expression. "And doesn't even hesitates, just sees us, rolls her eyes, and pulls off one of her shoes-"  
"Hold on, did you just say 'kissed', and 'kiss', because that's what I heard-"  
"And this wasn't some pump or something! A proper, dangerous high-heeled shoe, and she just chucked it at us and the heel part hit me in the jaw and the toe hit you on the nose, and we jumped apart-"  
Steve continued it for him. "Yeah! And I thought we for in for it then, what with it being illegal and everything, and she just clucked her tongue at us and shook her head-"  
"And said," (And here Bucky affected a ridiculous falsetto). "'You two are impossible, don't think I didn't see this coming. But you break his heart, James Barnes, and I'll break you!"  
They laughed and finally turned to pay attention to Tony, who was making gestures with his hands and glancing between the two of them, shocked.  
"So, no, hold on," he finally choked out. "You two are _romantically involved_."  
"Yes." they said, together. He nodded.  
"Ok, alright. And you have been since you were fifteen, so," He did a quick bout of mental math. "Since 1933. And she was ok with that?"  
Bucky scoffed. "Haven't you been listening? Steve's suffragist, socialist, immigrant, nurse, single mother - the woman who raised the little shit what deliberately went around the back of clip joints at night to raise cain with any goons he didn't think were bein' agreeable enough to the twists-"  
"Bucky." cut Tony, still interested, but unimpressed. "Speak English."  
Bucky sighed. "I mean, he'd pick fights behind bars with guys who were rude to girls. And she taught him that! On purpose!"  
"She had a meaner right hook than I'll ever have." nodded Steve wistfully.  
"I think Pepper and Natasha need to meet this woman." agreed Tony.  
"As I was saying," continued Bucky. "Steve's Ma's only problem with us was that she didn't want us getting caught."  
"Not that doing illegal things bothered her." commented Steve. "She's the reason I can hotwire a car."  
"And pickpocket. And steal chickens."  
"Yeah, them too."  
Tony leaned back, mentally drained. "You two are childhood-ruiners. Captain America stole chickens!"  
Steve pouted puppyishly at him. "It was the depression. And besides, if my Ma didn't teach me to pick fights around the back of bars, I wouldn't be here."  
Bucky nodded thoughtfully. "And if not for Mrs. Rogers, we wouldn't have just found a way to come out to Tony and scare his balls off."  
Tony glared at them. "Yeah, how did you two manage to hide that, anyway?"  
They glanced at each other, then shrugged. "She taught us to be discreet too."

**Author's Note:**

> This is shitty. Sorry.


End file.
